Columns : The Federal Voice

Stiff Drug Offense Sentences Save Lives

The new administration is planning to severely punish drug dealers, and that will save lives of officers and civilians.

June 16, 2017
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by Jon Adler

Thanks to new Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a recent FBI report, former President Obama's mythology regarding alleged "non-violent" drug dealers has been debunked.

In justifying his commuting the sentences of an unprecedented number of drug offenders, Obama characterized them as "non-violent." In furtherance of his quest to let these allegedly non-violent death peddlers go free, he directed former Attorney General Eric Holder to have his prosecutors bypass mandatory minimum sentences and pursue lesser, if any, prison time. Fortunately, this mythology is ending.

On May 10, Attorney General Sessions issued a highly publicized department memorandum that called for a reversal of Holder's soft-on-drug-offenders sentencing policy. In his memorandum to federal prosecutors, Sessions stated, "Our responsibility is to fulfill our role in a way that accords with the law, advances public safety, and promotes respect for our legal system. It is of the utmost importance to enforce the law fairly and consistently."

God bless AG Sessions for understanding that the costs associated with prison populations aren't remedied by letting the death peddlers roam free.

Sessions made two more statements in his memorandum. "First, it is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense." Unfortunately, Holder failed to grasp that the lethal conduct of those who peddle death falls into this category. To reinforce the importance of unwavering sentences for death peddlers, Sessions stated, "By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences."

It's clear that Sessions understands that telegraphing a soft country-club-type prison sentence to a death peddler will only inspire them to continue. When the reward is too great, and the punishment too soft, the number of death peddlers will only increase.

It is disconcerting that Obama and Holder apparently concluded that death peddlers playing ping-pong calmly in a federal penitentiary were somehow non-violent. When addicts go nutter and take lives, the death peddlers are to blame; especially when they kill law enforcement officers.

A recent FBI report titled, "The Assailant Study–Mindsets and Behaviors," validated this. The Bureau reviewed 50 of the felonious fatal attacks committed against law enforcement in 2016, and analyzed the factors that contributed to the lethal behavior of the murderers. The findings illustrated how drug abuse factored into several of the assailants' violent behaviors directed against law enforcement officers. It is important to note that none of these assailants manufactured or grew their own drugs.

According to the FBI report, "60% (30/50) of the assailants had a history of drug use, with 32% confirmed to have been under the influence at the time of the incident. Forty-six percent of the assailants' toxicology was unknown at the time of the study." What this means, at a minimum, is that at least 16 cop killers were doped up when they committed their unforgivable sin.

My question to Obama and Holder is: How do you conclude that the death peddler that supplied cop killers with drugs is non-violent? The report goes on to state that assailants' "drug use led to a heightened sense of desperation to avoid arrest and incarceration."

The report also documented two significant conclusions based on the input of law enforcement professionals. First, it stated that, "Many law enforcement personnel are seeing an 'escalation toward violence' by those who abuse drugs." Death peddlers knowingly sell drugs with increased potency or laced with lethal synthetics. The one fingerprint missing from every weapon a drug user wields to kill a law enforcement officer is that of the death peddler.

This point is further established in the second conclusion that revealed, "Police officers stated that an assailant who has entered into a 'drug-induced psychosis' that causes desperation and paranoia is more willing to shoot an officer to stay out of jail. Multiple law enforcement officials believed that the assailant in their specific incident would not have used deadly force against the officer if the assailant was sober." That conclusion is indeed sobering, and one that Obama and Holder should have considered.

Death peddlers do not make an honest living, rather they instigate horrific death. And the death peddlers who provided drugs to cop killers should be charged with murder. Death peddlers are responsible for the drug-induced madmen who kill cops, and they should be prosecuted for their unconscionable violence.

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